


Decisions

by LadyTroll



Series: Gloryhammer Reverse!AU [12]
Category: Gloryhammer (Band), Original Work
Genre: (somewhat) good Zargothrax, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Dark Fantasy, Gen, Memories, Morally Ambiguous Character, Not Canon Compliant, Roleswap, making Important Decisions, that goes for both Zargothrax and Ralathor BTW, the hermit is still dissatisfied but he is a bit nicer now, the regular GH disclaimer applies, yes it's the same damn Ralathor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29880111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyTroll/pseuds/LadyTroll
Summary: A very important decision has to be made.
Series: Gloryhammer Reverse!AU [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540978
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, I got to [this](https://uupiic.tumblr.com/post/188574244298), which is, again, one of the first things I wrote in this AU.
> 
> One more time, for anyone who didn't read the tags:  
> Yes. _Yes, it's the same damn Ralathor._ Don't fix it if it ain't broke *shrug*

_”Zargothrax was finally defeated. But, in the epic final struggle with the dark sorcerer…”_

Ralathor slammed the book shut with such force as though it were personally responsible for this mess and tucked it away into the farthest end of the third bookshelf from the top, between “How to Cook This: Everyday Goblin Cuisine and Recipes for Those on the Go, by Oti Marsh” and “Sheep Over the Hill, My Bagpipes, and Other Poems, by Assorted Authors of the Highlands of the 5th Century”. 

It was once again useless and only showed him what he already knew.

In retrospect, he admitted that was his own fault, to a degree. He should have asked for something more specific, or, at the very least, less confusing. “Something to help” was vague at best and, quite ironically, unhelpful at worst. Both of which, incidentally, described the book in most cases. It had slumbered for a hundred years. Then, a year ago, it suddenly became active again, only to drop some vague information – just like it always did – and go back to being unhelpful and reciting things he already knew. A couple of weeks ago, same thing happened; the difference being that, if the previous time it had at least given him some guidelines, then this time it downright refused to give any sort of answers to questions asked.

_Would it kill the blasted thing, to be less vague, occasionally?_

Okay, so he needed to put together what scarce information he had right now.

And right now, this very minute; right there, in this very room; right behind his back. There was a Zargothrax.

This was okay, he supposed.

An hour (or maybe two; there had been too much information dropped onto his head at once, to also keep track of the passage of time) had passed since he and the intruder had stood face-to-face for the first time, and, even after hearing the story – and parts of it repeated, at Ralathor’s own request – the hermit was still in the uncanny valley between _”this is fine”_ and _”what in the name of Hoots is this fuckery that you are talking about?!”_

This was okay.

Perhaps.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

\- Why did you even come here?

Zargothrax twitched, slightly. He had been examining the bottles and containers on the alchemist’s bench, where a concoction of rather questionable origins (dug up in the depths of the bookshelves) was currently brewing at its own pace, and Ralathor really hoped he was not going to be woken up, in the middle of the night, by something going off, the courtesy of an evil wizard messing with things he should not be messing with.

\- You must have known you had little to no chance of learning whatever you wanted to find here, at least since you have so little time. Bit of a fool’s hope, whatever you were thinking.

\- I figured it was as good as any other plan. – The wizard shrugged, his head tilted to one side, as he reached over and poked one of the bottles. – I’ve seen a lot of weird shit over the past year. Going to strange places, because a dream told me to wouldn’t be the… _fuck!_

\- A dream. Told you to.

Ralathor stared into the wizard’s back, unsure what he was to say – or to think, of his unconventional guest’s mental state. On one hand, he figured he should not wonder about that. He was, after all, dealing with Zargothrax; and Zargothrax had never been one to sport the most stable mental state of them all, normally balancing between “the evil wizard” and “the unstable evil wizard”, and there was not much of a difference between the two, just that “the evil wizard” meant there would be significantly less fire and lightnings involved.

Still, a dream telling the person who saw it to go and find something/someone was more of an _Angus_ area of expertise.

In the wizard’s defence, it did not appear as though he had exactly planned to unleash this information onto unsuspecting hermits as well.

\- I meant, I have done weirder things that this. What was your question, again?

\- Why come here, - Ralathor silently cursed himself over this, - if you knew you wouldn’t be able to learn _whatever I might have left behind,_ as you put it?

\- What else was left for me to do? See, - Zargothrax made an uncertain gesture with his hand; at least he had finally left the alchemist’s bench alone, even though the hermit made a mental note to check on it once he had dealt with the wizard, - for a year now, I’ve been trying to find a way to defeat him. And everything falls flat! Every plan! Failures, failures, failures! At this point, I’m ready to raise an undead army, reinforce with demons and march over to Dundee’s gate!

\- Demons?

He had already heard that before, _and it never ended well._ Especially if _Zargothrax_ was involved in any way.

\- Yeh. And don’t come at me with the “real” part, because I know that _there exist demons._

\- I wasn’t going to.

Ralathor crossed his arms on chest again. This was a completely new situation, and this was the only way he knew how to deal with it at the moment.

He was not sure he wanted to be here.

Literally any other place in the universes and their tangled mess of timelines would work.

But not _here_ , and not _now_.

\- That scowl says otherwise. Most people don’t think they’re real. Most people just haven’t… - the wizard silenced for a moment, before shaking his head and forcing a very fake smile onto his face. – Never mind that. I’m simply out of options here. I’ve waited for long enough.

\- What about the rebellion? Surely, not all of them are as horrible of a brood as you described them?

\- The resistance? Don’t make me laugh! – Zargothrax made an aggressively dismissive motion with his hand. – They’re all bumbling buffoons who spend more time squabbling among themselves than they do on any battlefield! If there ever was a reason for why they exist, it’s not there anymore. Even the goblins are better, and all they’ve done is salt the… Dundaxians… Dundonians? Who comes up with these names, anyway? Ah, screw that! They’re more concerned about robbing peasants than killing the prince and his pals.

\- Killing?

Yes, this was already something that Ralathor knew, even though the joy about that revelation was completely out of place.

\- Well, I _was_ thinking about hanging, drawing and quartering them, but, since I hold no legal power, just killing will have to do.

Zargothrax just rambled on, with his usual enthusiasm, about all things killing and maiming people, and the hermit felt his heart sink.

_Am I really supposed to support and help an evil wizard now?_

_Fucking really?_

\- Did you even hear yourself, _what_ you just said? – He tried again.

_Perhaps there is some kind of reason here, and I’m just not seeing it yet?_

_Maybe it’s just the status quo of things that I’m used to?_

\- Yes, I said: _” I was thinking about hanging, drawing and quartering them, but, since I hold no legal power, just killing will have to do.”_ \- Zargothrax declared, far too joyous for the discussion of such topics.

\- Of course, you did.

There was an awkward silence for a while, as Ralathor attempted, desperately so, to connect the dots in his head. Alas, his brain refused to work on this task.

He had never thought he would say something like this, but…

\- I think I need some fresh air…

***

Upon emerging from underground, Ralathor was confronted by the cold, hard truth that his sense of time was finally, as the mortals would put it, “screwed up completely”. He vaguely remembered that the sun had been near the horizon when he had descended into the tunnels the previous day. Now the sun was near the horizon _again_ , but on the other side, and, instead of a blurry sunset to the west, the sky in the east was smeared with yellow and rose, the lazy star crawling its way up slowly, as though it had spent the night slumbering and was barely awake right now.

It was good that way, the hermit figured. Looking up at the night sky always felt like a crime to him, especially in the wilds where there was not a single soul nor source of artificial light anywhere. Too many things to distract a person, up there. Up there, one could always find a new star, or a majestic supernova, or a dark spot where a supernova had been, and the constellations had proven to be distracting on more occasions than Ralathor would have liked to admit.

It was not as bad shortly before the sunrise. Certainly, there were still stars up there, but they were hardly of an interest now that they were soon to be robbed of their charm.

Therefore, he could sneak a peek.

He had not wandered far, instead just collapsing on top of the burial mound where he could keep an eye on the door. The same door that Zargothrax should have never found in the first place.

That was, Ralathor admitted, a bit of his own fault. He should have added more wards to the area. He should have masked the entrance better. He should have just had the warding sites negate any and all magic that did not have his imprint on it.

_A lot of should haves._

It was a daunting task that had been shoved upon him this time.

That face… the last time he saw _that_ face had been seconds before its owner, albeit older, dissolved into sparkly dust that clotted together, reminiscent of liquid in the poor sunlight that breached the clouds above their heads. Last time he saw _that_ face, behind a mask cracked in halves, it was twisted in anger and hatred, and a snarl of disdain.

How many times exactly _had_ he been doing this? Too many to count, probably. In such long life, you let go of numbers and years, and they no longer mattered to you or to anyone else.

This time, though, he had been thrown in here with a short and cryptic message that read: _”Redemption.”_

Redemption for whom? For him, for all the blood he had on his hands by now? For the gods, for forcing the mortals to play their perverse games where the only winners were those who died first and did not have to stick around for the grand finale?

For Zargothrax?

The hermit shuddered and pulled the cowl tighter around his shoulders. The nights had long ceased being just chilly, as the winter hung at the horizon just like the sun did at the moment, and he would not be surprised if the coming days brought with them the first snowfall. That would, on its turn, mean the area became nigh impossible to navigate, on foot and above ground, and he would once again have to be careful as he made his way into Cowdenbeath, to make sure the pesky mortals in the town did not follow him into the tunnels.

He never got any clear guidelines, too. This time, it had meant more than a hundred damned, long, completely wasteful years spent waiting for the darkness and the hero to rise – only to get hit in the fact with the fact that those two had, by some strange coincidence, or a cruel joke of whatever entities were looking for amusement in such sick ways, switched their places.

At first, he had not had the slightest idea something might have changed at such grand scale. He had to admit, the propaganda machine of Dundee was already a well-oiled one, for such young nation. He had been ready to eat up the lies that the wizards had been a threat – for Ralathor had seen, time and again, that wizards were, indeed, a threat. As such, he had been ready and willing to believe what his own mind tossed at him – that there was a Zargothrax who was up to his old tricks and used Auchtermuchty as a cover for whatever plans he had this time. Angus must have had a serious reason, to march into the city and make short work of all but one of their wizards, for Ralathor refused to believe there were ulterior motives involved on the prince’s part.

He had been ready to eat all those lies right up, even when the belief had been swayed by the comical first-hand accounts of the supposed sacrifice that Angus had, supposedly, saved from certain death at the hands of the supposed horrifying dark sorcerer who was now on the run.

If _he_ had believed it, then what about the simple folks to whom magic was something scary, because that was what they saw most – people and things those people could achieve that regular mortals never imagined in their wildest dreams?

But he knew to keep his eyes open, too, and so he had watched, and the more he saw the more those images shattered and left a bitter taste in his mouth, just as the events he witnessed left a deep frown on his face.

And still, he clung to the truths he knew, for they were safe and made sense when nothing else did, and he was even willing to close his eyes on the inconsistencies and outliers that he had found no explanation for.

There must be an evil wizard and a good prince. That was the order of things.

Alas, what he had right now was a runaway, supposedly not evil wizard, and a tyrant of a prince.

Admittedly, he had been contemplating joining _this_ Angus. Perhaps it would be better that way; Ralathor would have lied, had he said that he had not entertained the idea. No evil wizards raising hell – literally and as a figure of speech. Hunt down the fugitive, swear a magical oath… and bend his knee in front of a tyrant. _This_ Angus would not take a “no” for an answer. You knelt – or you perished.

Ralathor had comforted himself with the knowledge that, sooner or later, all princes died, and kings died, too, regardless of whether or not they carried a magical, mind-altering hammer into battle.

In fact, he had already decided to pay McFife a visit; he just had to grab one last thing…

And then, his magic howled intruder.

And then…

And then, right there, in the middle of Ralathor’s well-hidden home, stood Zargothrax.

A Zargothrax who, as far as the hermit was able to establish without asking him straightforward, had absolutely no idea of the atrocities his namesake had committed in other worlds, but who willingly admitted he was desperate enough to try. A Zargothrax whom, in another world, Ralathor had first seen from the shadows when the sorcerer rode into Dundee on an undead monster only a fool would call a unicorn, and who, in this world, got overly excited telling a strange story about an escape on a unicorn that just so happened _to be there_ at the right place, at the right time.

(On second thought: in this or another world, those magnificent beasts seemed to have a penchant for Zargothrax.)

A cold breeze of wind forced shiver down Ralathor’s back.

The stench of a battlefield was something you never quite forgot, regardless of how much you tried.

Neither would you ever forget how it felt when your hand became slick with somebody’s blood, and it did not matter whether that somebody would be a prince, or a wizard. It hurt all the same.

The hermit gazed up at the sky briefly. He then straightened his back, shoulders square with determination.

If the gods (or whatever entities were out there, presenting as such) wanted this one dead, too, then they bloody well should do it themselves.

“Redemption”.

Heh, he was going to take that and make what he believed to be the right choice, regardless of what these mystical entities thought of him. At least this time his conscience would be clean!

Hopefully, this one would have enough healthy sense not to throw himself into the nearest volcano.

Or drown in liquid ice. That had been a weird day, for everybody involved…

It appeared, however, as though the aforementioned mystical entities were inclined to give Ralathor one last chance, to avoid being dragged into the middle of yet another feud, the courtesy of wizards and princes of the land of Caledonia, for, as the hermit hauled himself up, there was a rustle on the other side of the entrance to the tunnels, and a moment later the one fault at the commotion emerged. The visitor had, once again, donned the unassuming cloak and had the bag hanging on his shoulder.

\- You are leaving.

Ralathor had long ago stopped asking questions and resorted to observations instead.

\- Well, yes. – Zargothrax scratched his chin. – I came here, looking for information on the things you can do. But, seeing how there is none, there’s nothing left for me to do here, either. Sorry for the home invasion, I really am. I didn’t think somebody would be here. Shit excuse, but that’s what I have. Didn’t mean to barge into your house like that. If I had known that you’re still here, all… living and all… I would have gone looking for a way to contact you, before coming here.

\- I see. And what exactly are you planning to do now?

\- I’ll go back to the goblins, and then I’ll see from there. Maybe the whole thing wasn’t even about _you_. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. There’s lots of stones in this country, and it’s not like the wizards of the old were shy about using magic back and forth. Once again, sorry for barging into your house like that.

Ralathor winced.

He knew he was going to be sorry for this later.

\- Stay.

The wizard’s face reflected the exact same amount of surprise that the hermit felt. 

Ralathor still could not believe he was saying this, even as the words left his mouth:

\- You can stay here. I’ll see what I can do, to help you.

**Author's Note:**

> He will be sorry later. Not because "eViL WiZArdS" but simply because he's become unused to... well... _this_ *gestures vaguely at the whole of Zargothrax*
> 
> Also no, it's not the same book that thinks it's an angry Roomba.


End file.
